Senior Coach Justin Longmuir reunited with Nathan Buckley in the coaches’ box on Saturday, with the Collingwood great invited to shadow Longmuir as an observer during Walyalup’s win against Narrm.
 
Longmuir was Buckley’s defensive assistant coach between 2017 and 2019 and he was eager to get feedback from Buckley, who played 280 AFL games and coached a further 218.
 
“I wanted to get him around match day and around our preparation, to give me a bit of feedback and help me on my coaching journey,” Longmuir said.
 
“He is a guy with a lot of experience in footy and the more of those guys you can have helping you, the better coach I am going to be.”

Buckley said he would send his notes through to Longmuir and former Fremantle and Collingwood player teammate James Clement, who is on the Walyalup board.
 
“I was just an observer and a listener,” Buckley told Fox Footy.
 
“I’ve got some notes to send back to JL, his coaching group and (former teammate) James Clement who is on the board. They should be well-pleased with what they’ve been able to do in the last month.”
 
“I spoke to JL early in the year (about going into the coaches’ box). It was great to be able to get in with the Fremantle coaching group and their pre-match meetings and post-match meetings as well, and just get a sense of how they are going about it.
 
“I really enjoyed it, the connection between the coaches and players is great and they’re on a bit of momentum at the moment.”
 
Buckley was impressed with how the young Walyalup list has handled losing significant experience from their list in the off-season through the likes of David Mundy (376 games), Rory Lobb (150 games), Blake Acres (130 games), Darcy Tucker (115 games) and Griffin Logue (74 games).
 
“They’ve won their last four in a row and won 15 games of footy last year, and they were just shy of the top four finish,” Buckley told SEN.
 
“We know their best is pretty good but they’re asking a lot of young players to come in and fill what was a loss of around 20 per cent of their matches played and experience on their list.
 
“One-fifth of your experience going out is difficult to replace.
 
“They’ve got a little bit of momentum now, they’ve come up against Narrm, they had more inside 50s and they were able to defend that.
 
“Fremantle’s efficiency going inside forward 50 has been an issue but they kicked 12 goals from limited inside 50s.
 
“They’ve got a forward line that are having a crack in young Jye Amiss who kicked two goals in the last quarter for a tally of three for the game. He stood up when he needed to. I thought that was a really strong performance.”

Buckley has special praise for Luke Jackson, who stood up as the lone ruck when Sean Darcy came off in the second quarter with a hamstring injury.
 
“I saw him obviously close-up,” Buckley said.
 
“It's a great way to judge a player on how he handles coming up against his old teammates and his performance was excellent.
 
“When the game needed someone to stand up and to really challenge, his work in and around stoppages was great, his aerial work was great.”

Buckley said Walyalup are set up in both their ruck and forwardline, with Jackson contributing to both.
 
“They (Jackson and Sean Darcy) could well be the best ruck duo going around over the next couple of years,” Buckley said.
 
“(Josh) Treacy is still a young player, (Jye) Amiss is showing signs that is going to be great and he had a really strong game, especially in the big moments.”

Club to challenge O'Meara charge
WAFL Wrap: Peel snatch victory
Backs back to their best